Greg

I knew a prostitute who went by the name Tristan Isolde. She was a real dish, and a lady to boot. One summer, she cut a deal with the guy who ran TKTS and he let her work the booth on alternate Thursdays. For $35, she offered a mezzanine seat for Annie and two hours at the Chelsea Hotel. Fifty clams got you a balcony seat for The Tap Dance Kid and a three-way at Port Authority. For $100, she would perform the entire soundtrack of Dreamgirls in a bathtub, complete with Nell Carter mask. I was partial to her Mummenschanz special, for obvious reasons. One night a couple of years ago, I ran into her at a roast-pork joint on the Lower East Side. She'd been working as a legal secretary, she told me, and was married now, with a kid. "It wasn't the same after Miss Saigon," she said. "Suddenly, being a prostitute wasn't cool anymore." I sighed and gazed into my rice and beans, thinking, Andrew Lloyd Webber ruined everything.